


Pride

by CaptainNightGale



Series: The songs our lives sing [4]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pride, Song fic, nah have some encouragement and belief in themselves that'll work, some day I might give these guys a plot and a story, the ot4 - Freeform, today is not that day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 04:24:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11959671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainNightGale/pseuds/CaptainNightGale
Summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_guBE6TBhoMlisten I don't even knowChat Noir may have his pride, but Adrien needs a little convincing





	Pride

Chat Noir crouches on a roof top of Paris and watches the parade flow through the street below him.  
It’s a cacophony of colours, a cavalcade of brash noise and discordant yells and laughter and cheers. Everyone clashes in loud, in bold, in colours of life, and the signs are hard to read.  
It’s beautiful.  
He smiles, watching the festivities. Really, he should be down there. With his partners. As himself, as… as Adrien Agreste, only he _can’t_ because then the press will find out, and his father–  
His tail drops against the rooftop beside him, his cat ears flattening against his hair. Perhaps if his mother had still been around, but things have changed and it no longer felt the same, and maybe _Paris_ was still his home, and it had become more so in recent years, but… ah…  
He wonders if he’ll be able to spot his partners, in all this colour and noise. If he did, it would be by Alya – She would be loud and proud and unapologetic (not that the other two _wouldn’t_ be, only that she would be the loudest by nature, because it’s who she is). And the other two wouldn’t be far from her.  
They’d all been so excited about going. But he hadn’t been able to convince his father to let him out, not even for a faux trip with Chloe, and so –  
Chat Noir sighs. So he’d snuck out, instead, so he could at least be there.  
Footsteps on the roof behind him.  
“Just here to watch, Kitty?”  
He shrugs. “There could be an akuma.”  
“ _Where’s the pride for the straights_ , right?” Ladybug laughed, bumping her hip against his shoulder on her way to sitting beside him.  
“Those ridiculous straights.” Chat Noir flashes her a grin, and notices the messy flag painted on her cheek; pink, yellow, and blue. “Are you headed down there?” He taps his cheek when she raises an eyebrow.  
She strokes the flag, fondly. “I was down there already. But then I saw you up here and alone, so…”  
Chat smiles, his heart not quite in it. “I would have spotted you, My Lady, surely.”  
“I was a civilian, Chat. With two of my partners.” Her tone is fond, only a little bit sad.  
Chat bites back his jealousy. They’ve been over this, it’s long laid to rest. He’ll always love her, but they have partners of their own (not that she knows of his; for once, she’s been happy to gush about hers while he sits and listens, learning about those who have made His Lady happy in a way he couldn’t).  
“What about you? Not going down?” She rests her hand lightly on his head, playing with one of his ears.  
“I – can’t.” He slumps down, shifting to sit properly rather than crouching. “My father doesn’t–”  
“What does he matter?” Ladybug cuts across him, fire in her eyes. “This day is for _you_ , for _us_ , for _solidarity_ , and if you let one person–”  
“It’s difficult, Ladybug,” he replies, eyes on the parade. “He’s twice the man–”  
“Not if you aren’t safe enough to be yourself.” She grabs his hand.  
“I – I don’t know if that is me, if I _am_ –” Because yes, he’d fallen hard for his Lady, and he cared deeply about his friends but he’d never _had_ friends like these before, and what if that was it, if he was just mistaking friendship on his part for something… more?  
“Hiding from it all doesn’t make it go away,” Ladybug replies, considering him. “You know you can still be a part of it. Even if you’re questioning.”  
“I don’t…”  
“Come walk with us,” Ladybug tilts his hand in her grasp, tugging gently. “Side by side with me and my partners.”  
“Do – do your partners know who you are?” he hesitates, because they’ve never told each other, and he’d assumed that they’d be the first to know, if they ever decided to tell. But she’s in love with these others (he had no names, no descriptions, just how she felt about them), and so maybe she had taken that step, to trust them with every part of her.  
“No. No, I’d be… I’d be a civilian.” Ladybug holds tight to his hand and he can feel her trembling.  
It takes Chat a while to connect the dots (so painstakingly scattered across the mask about her eyes, bolder than the freckles he can see dusting at the edges of it), and he feels so slow for it. “You – you’d let me know? Who you are, without the mask?”  
“The only thing you don’t know is my name, Chat.” Ladybug flickers him a quick smile, and he can see the strain. The panic this is causing her (because it's one of the first things they were told, _not_ to let anyone know who they are beneath the masks, not that they don't want each other to know (she's hinted at that enough times, but always - distant. Once Hawkmoth was gone, perhaps)).  
“I – no.” He shakes his head. “I… I’m not doing that. On our terms, My Lady. Not because I don’t have the guts to join a march.”  
“I wouldn’t offer if I weren’t serious about you knowing,” she replies.  
Chat hesitates _again_ because it’s tempting, so tempting to _finally_ know who his Lady is. But he shakes his head and carefully chooses his words. “That’s… too much attention. What if Hawkmoth finds out?”  
“I can take care of myself.” Ladybug snorts, spinning her yoyo.  
“But your partners?” He studies her face. The blue of the flag is almost the same as her eyes, but no paint could match that colour.  
She hesitates. “At least one of them would be down for punching him out.”  
Despite himself, Chat laughs.  
Ladybug smiles and relaxes. She might have meant it, but that doesn’t mean she was completely ok with the idea. He made the right choice.  
“Well, if you won’t walk with us, there’s one thing you and I can do.” Ladybug gets to her feet, brushing herself down.  
Chat stands, too, and studies the parade below. It’s so long; they’ve been sitting here a while, and the end is still not in sight. “What’s that?”  
Ladybug offers him her hand again. “Admit it to yourself, Kitty. Be a part of this.”  
Chat takes her hand, cautiously, and she pulls him into a freefall that turns to a controlled swooping dive above the parade until they reach the biggest float, where the cameras are centred. He’s sure that they’ve already been picked up on at least one, and as they land he sees more focusing on them.  
Somewhere, a screen is showing he and Ladybug side by side, hand in hand, on a float in the middle of a pride parade, and Ladybug wears her colours proudly on her cheek.  
Chat grins and waves.  
Someone yells _Ladybug_ first, of course. They always do.  
But Chat Noir jumps eagerly into the crowds, once Ladybug’s let go of his hand, and soon finds himself in the thick of it, suit liberally spattered with glitter and paint, and holding a sign that loudly proclaims… _something_ about being queer on it. He’s not too sure, never read it before it was thrust into his hands.  
“Chat Noir, Chat Noir!”  
He recognises the voice as Alya’s, and his heart lifts unexpectedly because they’ve _found_ him, and ok maybe he’s not the _him_ they recognise, but they’re here together, and then her phone is all but thrust in his face.  
“What are you doing here, are you one of us?”  
He blinks, and studies her face. She’s grinning, hyped on _Pride_ and _Joy_ and probably sugar and caffeine, too, and the flag that she wears as a cape about her shoulders is the grey-ace flag, because what else would she have. Nino and Mari are just behind her. Nino’s grinning, his usual hat changed out for one in demi-pride colours, and he’s got an arm about Mari’s shoulders.  
Mari, who smiles softly at him with more joy and relief at his appearance than he’d expected because ok, they’re _friends_ in this guise, but – but close enough for that? Her cheek is painted with a flag; pink, yellow, blue. It’s achingly familiar (of course he remembers it’s _Ladybug’s_ , too, and the lines of it are the same, but maybe they just had the same artist) –  
He reaches out a gloved hand to touch it.  
She blinks at the touch, but doesn’t pull back (and is it just his imagination, or does she almost lean into his hand, too?).  
“Sorry.” He retracts his hand. Still in his suit. They might know each other, but not _that_ well. Not for him to casually rub a hand over her face (although he wonders, fleetingly, if it’s just as soft through his suit, and what that would even feel like–) “You – same flag as Ladybug. Who painted it on?”  
“I – I did.” Mari presses a hand to her cheek. “Shall I do you one, too?”  
He’s tempted. He’s _so_ tempted.  
“Where did she go?” Alya asks. “Was she just showing support, or?”  
“She went off to be with her partners,” Chat answers. “But she was giving me support, too.” He shakes his head and focuses on Alya’s camera, bringing it up to see his face properly, checking with her to see if it’s in focus.  
“Hi, Paris.” He grins. “You know me as Chat Noir, right? Today – today I’m _Lion Noir_ , and this–” He spreads his arms wide, to encompass _everyone_ about him, “This is my pride.”  
Everyone around them – and they’re near enough at the _front_ of this parade and he almost can’t believe it, but of course Alya has them up there, of course – erupts into cheers, having been hanging on his words.  
“And – and Ladybug?” Alya shouts to make herself heard.  
“She’s like me,” Marinette leans closer to make herself heard. “She’s pan!” And she _smiles_ at Chat again, with such – understanding, and such compassion that it almost breaks his heart because he can’t stand with them, not properly.  
“Great to see you, dude,” Nino says. “It means a lot.”  
“I–” Chat Noir backs up, making a split decision– “I have to be somewhere. With my – partners.”  
Is it his imagination, or does Mari smile softly again, almost as if she’s hiding the hurt of something? But what does she – he’s coming back to her, to them, but without the mask. There was no need for the hurt (not that he could tell her that _now_ (but _oh_ , how he wanted to, and he promises again to talk to Ladybug, to see if they could reveal themselves to their partners)).  
Alya draws her phone back to her chest. “Thanks for swinging by.” She grins, stepping back beside Mari and Nino.  
Chat grins again, and pushes himself up and away onto the nearest rooftop and down into the alley beyond it.  
The parade is loud – it can probably be heard all over the city – and somewhere in it is his Lady, celebrating the day with her partners.  
It might not be good enough for his father (or so he’d assumed, because it’s not like he’d spoken about this part of himself with his father (as if he’d spoken about _anything_ more than work and school with him recently)), but _damn_ if it wasn’t good enough for him, and he _wanted_ to be there, and if his father found out–  
Well, he wasn’t going to give up his pride. Not when Ladybug had been so _adamant_ that he claim it for his.  
Adrien releases the transformation, tucks Plagg into his jacket and runs, buying a snapback and a pair of glasses from the first pride vendor he finds and throwing them on before anyone can really see who he is. He’s still holding the sign, and keeps a tight grip on it as he runs towards the parade, to where he’d just left them, to where he’s _sure_ they’ll still be. It’s a sign, and there are many others like it. It’s not going to give him away.  
He finds them in the throng, and falls in beside Mari only slightly out of breath. “Hey, guys.” He dips down to press a kiss to her forehead. “I made it.”  
“Adrien!” She stutters as she sees him, face glowing with delight. “You managed to get away?”  
“Dude!” Nino punches him in the shoulder, then wraps an arm about him, pressing a wet kiss to his cheek. “How?”  
“I – I saw Ladybug. And Chat Noir. _Lion Noir_ ,” Adrien corrects himself, smiling. “And if they’re here, then – then so am I.”  
Mari smiles and nestles into his side, pulling Alya with her into an impromptu group hug, stumbling as the parade surges about them, never stopping for a moment.  
“This is me,” Adrien says to them all (and to His Lady, somewhere else in the crowd). “And I’m _never_ giving this up.”  
Mari reaches up to run a hand through his hair, and comes away with glitter and specks of paint. She glances up at the sign he’s holding, tilting her head to consider it.  
“Mari,” he says hastily, because she’s always been sharp and this is _not_ the place for a reveal, not with so many people around, “Can you paint my face?”  
“I – yeah.” She blinks at him. “How did you know I had my paints on me?”  
Shit. Woops. “Uh… Pride event?” He spitballs the idea, blindly shoving the sign into someone else’s hands, someone he doesn’t see and who disappears just as easily into the throng about them. “Someone’s always going to want stuff painted, right?” He tugs at his paint stained hair for emphasis. “There’s plenty around, if you don’t have them.”  
“No, I – I have them.” She nods. “Let’s just… find somewhere quiet, right?”  
“Dude, your father,” Nino says, tugging Alya with them off to the side, out of the body of the parade. “If he sees you–”  
“Then we’ll deal with that.” Adrien shrugs. “But I belong here and I’m not _ever_ giving up my pride.”

**Author's Note:**

> @Captainnightgale on tumblr too!  
> I actually have a vague sort of timeline for all these short things I'm doing but uh  
> they're a little bit out of order?  
> I have at least three others in the folder and then maybe an AU fic but who knowssss  
> This one clearly depends on songs. It's too easy (I love them ok)


End file.
